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Trying to find a good work/life balance. That was the ideal for many years but now people are beginning to shift this thinking into work/life integration. For an always-on society in rapid adoption of mobile devices and cloud computing the line between personal and work life has become very blurred.

A designer needs to connect with users differently than when designing for enterprise software that lives inside the corporate network and isn’t used “off-prem.” In a mobile world, users are more than their roles or permission levels; they’re people who are busy trying to do a good job while giving their families and friends the attention they deserve.

Young designers seem to have an intuitive understanding of this. They’re the first generation to grow up with mobile devices and the first to consider their digital lives as meaningful as their physical lives. Now that they’re having kids of their own, some of them are checking to see which URLs are available before they settle on baby names.

However, there is no age limit or expiration date on idealism values or business acumen. Designers from other generations can enhance their own skill sets by adopting some traits of their millennial colleagues.

Embrace Uncertainty – the design process is an exploration, rather than a solution

Netflix’s new series Abstract helps people to not only see the built designed world, but understands how it gets that way. Here at Scratch we’ve been patiently waiting for it’s launch as we can find common ground in the show that design is not perceived as a high-brow quality of objects owned by rich people but a way of thinking.

The series focuses on the lives and ideas of creators trying to tease out the drama of what it takes to bring things to life.

At one point Crawford tries to explain her material choices for Cathay Pacific’s swank airport lounges. The relatively inexpensive limestone of the hallway floors, she says, counterbalances the luxurious jade onyx on the walls. The rough, wooden tables complement the soft, mohair velvet–upholstered chairs. So, sure, expensive people talking rarified aesthetics, right? But Crawford insists it’s about more than superficial beauty. “When people walk in, they don’t know why they feel the way they feel,” she says. “But it’s actually all been orchestrated.” Understanding the intent behind design won’t necessarily change the way you feel about the world around you, but it might change the way you look at it.